Saturday March 8th, 2014 - Day 34
I decided if you were all going to get to know me then I should really start telling the stories that make me who I am, and today's is to show my resilience. And why I have such serious issues with my back and shoulder.
When I was 17, and under very little supervision we had a cottage up north in Balm Beach. Think north of Wasaga Beach, same idea, loads of sand and some wooded areas. We also had those dreaded 3 wheel ATVs (All Terrain Vehicles). They were very unstable machines because the front needed two wheels like a car, not one. One turned the machine too sharply, and too fast. They often, almost always, rolled over on people.
One weekend when up north with my brother, my two girlfriends and the many friends we had up there we decided to go "Three Wheeling" it was called then. Because we only had two machines, I took someone and my brother would go alone. His didn't ride double. So I rode double. My girlfriend Kelly and I headed up the back roads to the baseball field and through there, onto the trail. I drove, she on the back. It wasn't an easy trail having flood and rain ruts but then it came out to a field where I could allow a novice to take the machine for a tour. My brother was to meet us up there. We were tired of waiting for him. He, unlike me, was hungover. The night before we'd been at the local bar and whooped it up, I being the only one sober enough to drive home. Apparently his chain had come off his ATV and he had to stay back and fix it I found out later. Much later.
After Kelly had her turn driving in the field we decided to head back to see where my brother was. I got on to drive, Kelly on the back and we headed back. On the trail there were two parts to the trail itself, one for dirt bikes and one lower for snowmobiles. So for a 3 wheeler, we had the front tire on an angle, the rear right tire up on the dirt bike track and the rear left on the lower snowmobile trail. It did not make for easy driving. You needed strength to stay on the trail. Apparently I wasn't strong enough. At least not at the speed we were travelling.
When I awoke I was underneath the machine, it was on it's side and when I turned my head a tree shmooshed my nose. My helmet was gone, having come right off my head. I thought I was paralyzed. I couldn't feel my legs. Then it hit me, "where was she", my friend Kelly on the back on the bike, I couldn't see her, hear her, nothing. I crawled out from under the bike and in doing so the reality of my pain struck me. My leg, ankle and knee were in agony. My arm, the shoulder, wrist and hand, agony. My back, searing in hot pain. My head dizzy. But in my fear for my friend, it washed away, I crawled out to find her laying next to a tree.
When I rolled Kelly over I was stunned at what I saw. Her thigh was ripped open to the bone which was broken. It was the scariest thing I had ever seen. I sat her up against a tree and when she came to she thought I was her mother and I should get her help, that her leg hurt. I knew she was in shock, she couldn't see me, the woods, the depth to the issue with her leg. She was shivering violently. Immediately I stripped off my turtleneck and sweatshirt. I put the sweatshirt on her along and used my turtleneck to tie off her leg above the injury. I had to use my mouth and left hand due to my own injuries to get a knot tight enough to stop the bleeding. To put my face that close to her injury was one of the most frightening things I have ever done but I had to. All the while Kelly was talking about her mother, school, everything but, we are going to die here aren't we. All I could hope for was that my brother would come.
Once I got Kelly settled and back into my windbreaker I used the supplies we carried on the ATVs, the survival kits to build a fire. I hoped the fire would get my brother or anyone else's attention. Plus Kelly hadn't stopped shivering. I needed to warm her up. I also needed a cigarette, I was still a slave to them then.
Once the fire got going I felt the first raindrop. Come on!!! The rain quickly put out my fire and I knew I had to go get help. Kelly was going in and out of consciousness, each time forgetting who I was or where we were. I tried to right the ATV but it was so badly damaged I knew it would get me nowhere. I crawled to the trail and tried to stand up, immediately screaming and falling to my knees in pain. Kelly then seemed to come to and through tears begged me to get her help. That was, all it took.
I didn't matter anymore. Only Kelly did. She was going to die if no one came for us. I stood again and started on my way. I was exactly half way on the trail, hallway in, and halfway out. If I left the way I came in I was going to have to see my way out through some very difficult trails. The other way was the field and not to far, the highway. I headed for the highway.
All I distinctly remember is being thirsty and drinking from mud puddles, falling down a small ravine and falling through mud. Then I heard the dirt bike. Clear as day, on the other side of the ravine. I screamed and screamed hoping they'd hear me over the roar of their engine or that they would find Kelly, now alone in her misery and pain. They didn't hear or see us. Years later they recalled, the same people on the dirt bikes, that they thought they heard screaming.
Eventually I got to the county highway road. I fell to my knees in the middle of it, and screamed loud enough they came looking for me finding me crying in the middle of the road. They took me inside their house, called 911 and the mass search began. The police and ambulance arrived, we made our way back to the entrance of the trail. Me in the police car, the ambulance following. Once at the entrance they moved me to the ambulance for a check up. However, the only 4 wheel drive ambulance was the one I was in. They were moving me to another ambulance when my brother arrived. The sun was going down, he had finally gotten his ATV fixed, and he was worried. To see all the lights and sirens scared him so much he launched off his bike before stopping it. It crashed into the ass end of my ambulance. I screamed to him to lead the ambulance in, to where Kelly was left. I passed out when I later heard, "we've got her" over the radio. I woke up in the ER, Kelly in the next bay.
It was the worst day of my life and the most heroic as well. I will probably never have to be that much a hero again in my lifetime. Had I not walked when I did, Kelly for certain, would have died according to the paramedics and doctors. She wouldn't be Mrs. Kelly today, a wife, a teacher, mother of three beautiful girls.
She suffered so because I couldn't handle the ATV that day. Maybe I was showing off, I honestly don't know. I know just what it feels like to almost kill a friend. Kelly spent months in the hospital and rehabilitation. She had a broken femur, and her hip was cracked. Her ankle too I believe. I had a broken ankle, wrist, fingers. A dislocated knee, two herniated discs in my back and dislocated shoulder. Both the knee and shoulder had popped out and back in they say in the accident. The tendons and muscles said as much. My concussion was severe. But none of this was enough for the hospital to keep me over night or even XRay me. They sent Kelly by ambulance to a Toronto hospital and me via my brothers car home.
When we got home to our townhouse in the city my brother had to get a dolly, a moving dolly to get me inside the house. By now the pain had set in and he had to roll me from the ground where I fell out of the car onto the dolly and into the house. The next morning my mother came and took me to the local emergency hospital where all was diagnosed and cast or whatnot.
I stayed home from school for a month or more. Kelly was out for an entire term, 4 months. It was hard to know I had done that to her but I was relieved to see her again when I did. There were lawsuits and the like but that's what happens when a girl almost dies. There is no real blame only perceived but the driver and the injured. It is what it was, an accident and a scary one at that. The worst I will ever likely see or be involved in again.
I thank god all the time I lived through that but more so, that she did.
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